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Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper?

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Re: Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper?

#21

Post by wtallis »

wmf wrote: post #14
wtallis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare to https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/AmdahlsL...

The article is probably right about text processing though. It sounds like they took an inherently parallel task with no communication and (accidentally?) crippled it.

I'm not sure what's going on with that subtest, and the lack of scaling is certainly egregious. But we've all encountered tasks that in theory could scale much better but in practice have been implemented in a more or less serial fashion. That kind of thing probably isn't a good choice for a multi-core test suite, but on the other hand: given that Geekbench has both multi-core and single-core scores for the same subtests (though with different problem sizes), it would be unrealistic if all the subtests were highly scalable. Encountering bad scalability is a frequent, everyday part of using computers.

Re: Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper?

#23

Post by wtallis »

refulgentis wrote: post #20
wtallis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geekbench 6 isn't really marketed as a one-size-fits-all benchmark. It's specifically aimed at consumer hardware. The first paragraph on geekbench.com reads: > Geekbench 6 is a cross-platform benchmark that measures your system's performance with the press of a button. How will your mobile device or desktop computer perform when push comes to crunch? How will it compare to the newest devices on the market? Find out t…

The problem is, in practice, despite nonspecific marketing language, people do use the multicore benchmark to measure multicore performance. Including for things like Threadripper, which is not exactly an exotic science project CPU or non-personal or non-desktop.

> Including for things like Threadripper, which is not exactly an exotic science project CPU or non-personal or non-desktop.

We're talking about a CPU with a list price over $10000.

Geekbench 6 is a bad test to use to assess the suitability of a 96-core Threadripper for the kinds of use cases where buying a 96-core Threadripper might make sense. But Geekbench 6 does a very good job of illustrating the point that buying a 96-core Threadripper would be a stupid waste of money for a personal desktop and the typical use cases of a personal desktop.

Re: Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper?

#24

Post by jeffbee »

barrkel wrote: post #19
Aurornis wrote: post #5

GeekBench probably made the right choice to optimize for more realistic real-world workloads than for the more specific workloads that benefit from really high core counts. GeekBench is supposed to be a proxy for common use case performance. High core count CPUs are only useful for specific workloads and should not be purchased as general purpose fast CPUs. Unless you’re doing specific tasks that scale by core count,…

As an owner of a 96 core 9995wx, nobody is buying one for desktop PC much less laptop level software. To justify the investment you need to have tasks that scale out, or loads of heterogeneous tasks to support concurrently.

Right, this is a car-priced CPU and the only rational reason to have one is that you can exploit it for profit. One pretty great reason would be giving it to your expensive software developers so they don't sit there waiting on compilers.

Re: Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper?

#25

Post by ozfive »

barrkel wrote: post #19
Aurornis wrote: post #5

GeekBench probably made the right choice to optimize for more realistic real-world workloads than for the more specific workloads that benefit from really high core counts. GeekBench is supposed to be a proxy for common use case performance. High core count CPUs are only useful for specific workloads and should not be purchased as general purpose fast CPUs. Unless you’re doing specific tasks that scale by core count,…

As an owner of a 96 core 9995wx, nobody is buying one for desktop PC much less laptop level software. To justify the investment you need to have tasks that scale out, or loads of heterogeneous tasks to support concurrently.

What tasks are you running on your 96 core 9995wx?

Re: Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper?

#27

Post by Aurornis »

refulgentis wrote: post #13
Aurornis wrote: post #5

GeekBench probably made the right choice to optimize for more realistic real-world workloads than for the more specific workloads that benefit from really high core counts. GeekBench is supposed to be a proxy for common use case performance. High core count CPUs are only useful for specific workloads and should not be purchased as general purpose fast CPUs. Unless you’re doing specific tasks that scale by core count,…

I think this actually concedes the main criticism. If Geekbench 6 multicore is primarily a proxy for “common use case performance” rather than for workloads that actually use lots of cores, then it shouldn’t be treated as a general multicore CPU benchmark, and it definitely shouldn’t be the basis for sweeping 18-core vs 96-core conclusions. That may be a perfectly valid design choice. But then the honest takeaway is:…

> then it shouldn’t be treated as a general multicore CPU benchmark,

It is a general multi core benchmark for its target audience.

It’s not marketed as “the multi core scaling benchmark”. Geekbench is advertised as a benchmark suite and it has options to run everything limited to a single core or to let it use as many cores as it can.

96-core CPUs are not its target audience.

Re: Does Apple‘s M5 Max Really “Destroy” a 96-Core Threadripper?

#30

Post by whateverboat »

ozfive wrote: post #25
barrkel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an owner of a 96 core 9995wx, nobody is buying one for desktop PC much less laptop level software. To justify the investment you need to have tasks that scale out, or loads of heterogeneous tasks to support concurrently.

What tasks are you running on your 96 core 9995wx?

LLVM developer compiling the full LLVM stack every 10 minutes.
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